| On travel restrictions, as far as I am aware, it is legal for US citizens to travel to Cuba (obviously, no direct flights from the US however) but what is illegal for US citizens to do is spend money in Cuba. I think that is how it works.
And, I don't know if I could qualify Cuban system as being more successful than the US system. One of the issues of course is sheer scale of economy. One of the oft cited reasons though for the US wish to invade Iraq was Saddam wanted to do business in the Euro (in fact I think he did) and if the standard for oil transactions is changed from the US dollar to the Euro, many maintain the US position would become quite precarious. Russia for example have also threatened to use the Euro and I seem to recal OPEC have made noises about it.
In pure financial terms, the US probably beats Cuba hands down, in terms of quality of life (if one doesn't define it by owning two cars, microwave, TV's in every room etc) Cuba probably wins. Hard to say which is better, but if capitalism demands infinite growth, there's a rather obvious flaw, communism and socialism go wrong because they fail to deal with the human want for getting ahead of the pack. Somewhere in the middle, i.e. democratic socialism, probably lies the best balance between the needs of the state and the needs of the individual. That's what I suspect Cuba will become. |